Purpose
The Smart Farming Career Studies II is designed to further improve the region’s agricultural productivity by preparing agricultural producers to implement the use of drones, robots, and/or remote sensors. Enabling them to obtain data for better controlling crop growth, preventing losses caused by adverse weather conditions or infectious pests and thus, facilitating the return on investments.
Program Learning Outcomes
Upon successful completion, students will be able to:
- Professionally meet with prospective clients in order to present an overview of the services and outcomes that can be provided through aerial sensing.
- Visit prospective client’s locations and evaluate the site for mission readiness, fly-ability, and safety.
- Determine the proper sUAS aircraft and sensor payload to efficiently collect the data needed to provide the client with the desired outcome.
- Determine the proper mission parameters to use to collect the data such as, flight altitude, speed, forward and side overlap, data storage media, etc.
- Properly load, balance, and configure sUAS sensor packages and other payloads to carry out the mission.
- Test sensor packages and other payloads for mission readiness. 7. Practice, perform, and document all preflight Remote Pilot due diligence.
- Program the mission into the sUAS if mission is to be performed autonomously or if not simulate the mission mentally.
- Perform preflight inspection procedures to assure airworthiness of sUAS and readiness of sensor packages before the mission.
- Brief the crew, if any, on their responsibilities and duties before the mission and use checklists as often as possible to avoid mistakes.
- Properly perform FAA required recording and reporting pertinent to maintenance, flight paths, accidents, and other situations as required.
- Perform post mission inspections, maintenance, and safe storage procedures on all mission equipment and collected data.
- Process the collected data to produce the client’s desired outcome/s.
- Deliver and review the mission outcomes with the client.
- Plan a data collection mission, equip the drone to carry out the mission, fly the mission and acquire data, process the data, and develop a plan of action based on the results of the processed data.
- Learn to ground truth the assumptions that you made developing the plan of action.
- . Set up and prepare an agricultural drone for soil/plant health intervention missions.
- Plan and carry out a waypoint based mission to apply fertilize/pesticide/herbicide/seed to a field.
- Plan and carry out an A-B point mission to apply fertilize/pesticide/herbicide to a field.
- Plan and carry out a pre-mapped mission to apply fertilize/pesticide/herbicide/seed to a field.
- Perform post mission inspections, maintenance, and safe storage procedures on all mission equipment and collected data.
- Practice collecting data, processing data, developing action plans, and performing corrective/interactive missions on various row and field crops.
- Attempt to accurately predict the yield of crops from data collect mid-growing season and near end growing season.
- Practice fixed wing flight for missions that require large field (100’s of acres) data acquisition.
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